I'm considering quitting romance
Mar. 9th, 2022 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkSo...as you may know, I broke my own brand when I ended up writing a contemporary romance novel (Novel #3), which has been on submission to publishers for almost a year now. (Not continuously, but it's been almost a year since it first went on submission.)
I wrote Novel #3 as someone who, at the time, mostly read indie romance. In the indie/self-publishing space, there isn't as much of a feeling that writing contemporary romance alongside other forms of romance (SFF romance or romantic suspense) is brand-breaking. I had always considered myself--or at least, I'd always wanted to be--a SFF writer, but a stint in fanfiction is what drew me to romance, due to the combination of romance plots with suspense/mystery/SFF plots.
When publishing professionals suggested that writing a contemporary romance meant I should be a career contemporary romance writer, my reaction was kind of "oh no." I mean, I do have a document full of other contemporary romance ideas, and I wrote about 5k words' worth of a very commercial rom-com. But I never considered becoming a career romance writer, for a few reasons:
1) Even at the time I drafted Novel #3, I was considering quitting romance writing. Partly because of how hard it is as an author of color to get any recognition in the genre, and partly because the reception to my first novel made me feel that my brand of asexual, demiromantic, Asian, neurodivergent-influenced romance was *not mainstream*.
2) I've tried writing romances about straight characters before. They never work for me. Yet there's considerable backlash against female-presenting authors writing M/M romances in traditional publishing.
3) Even when I come up with commercial ideas, I rarely feel motivated to work on a contemporary romance. Novel #3 is probably an outlier because it encapsulated my personal struggles at the time (themes that I had actually tried to work into SFF novels, but had trouble doing so).
Now, more than ever, I'm definitively considering quitting romance writing.
Part of it is, yes, I've had a bad experience with my novel on submission so far. It's not dead yet, although I battle regularly with pessimism about whether anyone will publish it. But the kinds of responses I got from editors? I'd love to be able to talk openly about them one day, if I can.
But part of it is also that I've continued to have very little luck when reading traditionally published romances, to the point at which I'm starting to actively dislike the genre.
They're either too long and slow, or too sex-focused for my taste, or focused on one of those "commercial hooks" yet unable to explain them in a way that makes logical sense (like the author thought, hey, I need this trope to get a book deal, but there is not enough internal logic in the book to justify the trope, so the whole thing falls flat on its face).
Even for the few traditionally published romances I've given positive reviews to, I find that they leave my memory quite quickly, and even just a year later I have trouble remembering the plot and characters. (Whereas I can still remember the basic plot of indie romances I read 7 years ago.)
It seems that traditional publishing doesn't want "quiet" romances, so many of these romances are filled with conflict. Except sometimes, it doesn't make sense to have constant conflict between the main characters, and the arguing kills my ability to enjoy the book.
Traditional publishing apparently wants romances to be over 80k words (there was a whole argument about this on Twitter a month back regarding the length of Adult fiction). But many of these romances I find to be unbearably slow. In my opinion, long romances should be the exception, not the norm, because it takes a high level of skill on the writer's part to make 100k words' worth of romance interesting. (In my book, only Alexis Hall has managed to pull this off. Notably, he came from the indie romance space.)
I'm tired.
I'm tired of length and "marketability" concerns dictating the content of romance novels so that they make no sense or feel like they're full of useless fluff. (There is such a thing as compelling fluff; I'm talking about unnecessary fluff.) I'm tired of people thinking arguments = sexy plot progression, when the number one concern (FROM A WRITING CRAFT PERSPECTIVE) should be "does this make sense?"
I'm incredibly tired of seeing people on Twitter ask "where are the queer Asian romances?" and wanting to scream that I've been trying to get my queer Asian romance published for three years (!!!), but no one thinks my book will sell.
So, I am working on a book in a different genre now, and though it helps in some respects, it's also hard, because I went from writing stories that I knew how to write (and arguably was good at - though I'm sure my critics would disagree) to a genre that I've had to learn almost from scratch and revise into oblivion, which has done a number on my self confidence.
And it's so frustrating because I still believe the romance genre can be so much more than it is. But it isn't.
And that's why I want to quit it.
I wrote Novel #3 as someone who, at the time, mostly read indie romance. In the indie/self-publishing space, there isn't as much of a feeling that writing contemporary romance alongside other forms of romance (SFF romance or romantic suspense) is brand-breaking. I had always considered myself--or at least, I'd always wanted to be--a SFF writer, but a stint in fanfiction is what drew me to romance, due to the combination of romance plots with suspense/mystery/SFF plots.
When publishing professionals suggested that writing a contemporary romance meant I should be a career contemporary romance writer, my reaction was kind of "oh no." I mean, I do have a document full of other contemporary romance ideas, and I wrote about 5k words' worth of a very commercial rom-com. But I never considered becoming a career romance writer, for a few reasons:
1) Even at the time I drafted Novel #3, I was considering quitting romance writing. Partly because of how hard it is as an author of color to get any recognition in the genre, and partly because the reception to my first novel made me feel that my brand of asexual, demiromantic, Asian, neurodivergent-influenced romance was *not mainstream*.
2) I've tried writing romances about straight characters before. They never work for me. Yet there's considerable backlash against female-presenting authors writing M/M romances in traditional publishing.
3) Even when I come up with commercial ideas, I rarely feel motivated to work on a contemporary romance. Novel #3 is probably an outlier because it encapsulated my personal struggles at the time (themes that I had actually tried to work into SFF novels, but had trouble doing so).
Now, more than ever, I'm definitively considering quitting romance writing.
Part of it is, yes, I've had a bad experience with my novel on submission so far. It's not dead yet, although I battle regularly with pessimism about whether anyone will publish it. But the kinds of responses I got from editors? I'd love to be able to talk openly about them one day, if I can.
But part of it is also that I've continued to have very little luck when reading traditionally published romances, to the point at which I'm starting to actively dislike the genre.
They're either too long and slow, or too sex-focused for my taste, or focused on one of those "commercial hooks" yet unable to explain them in a way that makes logical sense (like the author thought, hey, I need this trope to get a book deal, but there is not enough internal logic in the book to justify the trope, so the whole thing falls flat on its face).
Even for the few traditionally published romances I've given positive reviews to, I find that they leave my memory quite quickly, and even just a year later I have trouble remembering the plot and characters. (Whereas I can still remember the basic plot of indie romances I read 7 years ago.)
It seems that traditional publishing doesn't want "quiet" romances, so many of these romances are filled with conflict. Except sometimes, it doesn't make sense to have constant conflict between the main characters, and the arguing kills my ability to enjoy the book.
Traditional publishing apparently wants romances to be over 80k words (there was a whole argument about this on Twitter a month back regarding the length of Adult fiction). But many of these romances I find to be unbearably slow. In my opinion, long romances should be the exception, not the norm, because it takes a high level of skill on the writer's part to make 100k words' worth of romance interesting. (In my book, only Alexis Hall has managed to pull this off. Notably, he came from the indie romance space.)
I'm tired.
I'm tired of length and "marketability" concerns dictating the content of romance novels so that they make no sense or feel like they're full of useless fluff. (There is such a thing as compelling fluff; I'm talking about unnecessary fluff.) I'm tired of people thinking arguments = sexy plot progression, when the number one concern (FROM A WRITING CRAFT PERSPECTIVE) should be "does this make sense?"
I'm incredibly tired of seeing people on Twitter ask "where are the queer Asian romances?" and wanting to scream that I've been trying to get my queer Asian romance published for three years (!!!), but no one thinks my book will sell.
So, I am working on a book in a different genre now, and though it helps in some respects, it's also hard, because I went from writing stories that I knew how to write (and arguably was good at - though I'm sure my critics would disagree) to a genre that I've had to learn almost from scratch and revise into oblivion, which has done a number on my self confidence.
And it's so frustrating because I still believe the romance genre can be so much more than it is. But it isn't.
And that's why I want to quit it.
